


Hungriest Ghost

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Cylons, Gen, Identity, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Mentions of Cancer, Season 3 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 05:24:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6182248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura's identity is definitely problematic these days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hungriest Ghost

This is a secret: not since the doctor told her she was going to die, not since that squeezed and terrible moment where the sound went out of her head and the ship passed overhead, has Laura Roslin felt like she was living her own life. Sometimes she thinks she's already dead and gone, a hungry ghost in a half-life, and sometimes she thinks she became someone else entirely when the doctor took her life away from her with that news.

If Laura felt like being honest about it, and she doesn't, really, she would have to admit she believes the second.

Laura Roslin is not herself, and she's known that for a very long time and held her tongue all the while.

Because most days, Laura doesn't like herself. Or this person who wears her skin and moves like her and talks like her, but isn't quite her, because Laura Roslin would have never stolen a child. Laura Roslin would have never outlawed abortion. Laura Roslin would have never slapped a man in the face for calling her cold, all the while knowing he was right and she was playing a role.

This person is fascinated to the point of obsession with Cylons. Almost worse than Gaius Baltar, she's fascinated, her eyes trying to take in the way the skin fits over their bones, breath coming faster as she watches and wonders how they can be so human. They could pass for human, more often than Laura in her own opinion. Sharon Agathon, her maternal fear for her child, her willingness to give up her people, her own salvation, all for love: this is so very, very human.

Caprica. That hurt that animates her whenever she speaks of Gaius Baltar. In a slightly different world, Laura could see hating Baltar for that alone. But that...that...woman. Responsible for the end of humanity, for what is this except some trailing nightmare, some loose ends that start a sequel to humanity, and yet...

Laura presses her hands to her temples as the world swims out of focus and surrounds her with pain. Trying to keep everything straight, about who she is and what she believes when in the back of her head, there's a nagging sense of it being all WRONG, sometimes makes the corners of the world too bright and dangerously fuzzy. Even though she knows there are sharp edges hidden by softness.

_What if you are?_

It's a voice that whispers to her everywhere. As she walks along the corridors of the Galactica. As she hisses at that vile traitor, Gaius Baltar. As her head rested against Bill Adama's chest in a stolen moment on New Caprica. As she knelt beside Lee Adama, daring to hope against hope. As she stares at the fourteen spots on the ceiling of Colonial One that she can see from her bed.

_What if you are?_

It's a question that's an answer. It's an answer in the form of a question, and one that Laura pushes back at whenever it dares to rise, specter-like and leering.

She can't be. A Cylon who died of breast cancer? Cylons don't...but they do die of disease. She remembers all too well, Karl Agathon's act of defiance against her. It would be clever, even. No one would suspect a faded, bright, but not especially noteworthy woman. Not one who was dying of internal rot. A good disguise. The best disguise.

Especially on a sleeper agent who couldn't quite wake up, but could access all those Cylon...advantages. Getting _just_ a little more out of her body than is really possible. Knowing how to manipulate everyone, like they were subjects of study.

_The way Cylons accomplish the goals humans don't..._

Her hands cover her face. It's not true. It's ridiculous. How could she face the devastation she's dealt to her own people? Killing her own in cold blood, taking sick and twisted _pleasure_ , because vengeance has its own pleasures, Laura would never deny that to herself, but to enjoy killing her own? No.

But her head. Her gods-cursed head. When the fleet went dark, when the Cylons came. Her head. Reality _moved._ She felt it flood her and move through her. She felt it like when she fell into her dreams, like the chemo drugs removed a barrier Laura kept up by sheer force of will, and she woke up into her reality. The reality where unimaginable power might just be at her command.

No.

No.

No.

To believe that, to believe that all that's keeping her from waking up a Cylon, cold and smiling and plunging a knife into what remains of humanity is her determination for it not to be true, that is the path to despair. Because she's not strong enough in the face of death, in the face of that horrible possibility, to fight the darkness that lurks with the question.

 _It changed. It moved through you, and you were so angry, you wanted to make him see what happens when you aren't happy. Wasn't the first time things have_ happened _while you were angry, either, was it, Laura?_

Laura's teeth find her tongue and bite down hard, and she is suddenly aware of the drip in the back of her hand. The ache of her muscles. The dryness of the back of her throat, the wetness on her cheeks. Oh. She meant to do some work this time, while she was getting her treatment. It just hurt too much. And the horrors that flicker at the edge of her thoughts swell up when she's weak.

Sometimes she goes away from her body when all that's in her body is agony and doubt.

Where does she go? Does everyone do that? Laura's always assumed people can. She just closes her eyes and she's not there.

Maybe that's how the thing that possesses her, the uncanny energy, the ice water daring, the things that make Laura Roslin legendary to her own people and her enemies alike. It sees her as she is: an empty shell. Waiting to live.

After all, what is she, who is she, if she's abdicated her life for how long now? More than three years now, out here in the cold eternity of space, the bitch mother of life.

Funny, Laura thinks as she hears her breathing and feels herself in her own tired, hurting body again. That space, the uninhabitable, the absolute barrier to life, is what gave birth to all of them.

It makes her laugh. Laura doesn't know why, but the sound brings Cottle around.

"Back with us, young lady?" he asks, shaking his head at you.

"Maybe. Or maybe I've just left," Laura says. He snorts at her, and that's good for making Laura feel more solid. More like she might be a real person, instead of a hungry ghost with a tenuous grip on a life she surrendered to a great and terrible version of herself she fears.

"Damn drugs make you even more mystical than you tend to be," he says. "Let's get you unhooked and on your feet."

"I think that would be for the best," Laura says carefully, heart pounding at all the things she would like to say.

_What if I am? What should I do then?_

She lets the question rest on the back of her throat, bitter and metallic and sliding away to strip away a bit more of her body.

This isn't where she'd find the answer anyway. If there's one to be found, it's in her.

And that, Laura has always known.


End file.
